Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Hammer returns!

Episode 6.7 “Life 101”

(Dir by Miguel Higuera, originally aired on November 4th, 2000)

Hammer returns during this episode but, before we discuss that, let’s get the dumb B-plot out of the way.  Coach K, is going out of town so he assigns Antonio to look after his dog, a chihuahua named Killer.  (What was the deal with both of the coaches always asking their dumb players to look after their pets, cars, and houses?)  Antonio and the boys lose Killer at the mall.  However, they then see a little girl named Susie adopting a chihuahua on television.  Assuming that the girl has adopted Killer, they bribe the girl with toys to get the dog.  When they give the dog to the Coach, he immeidately sees that it’s not Killer because it’s a girl and not a boy.

Uh-oh!

No worries, though.  It turns out that the woman who found Killer saw a flyer that the boys put up and she shows up at the gym with Killer.  She asks Coach K out on a date.  “Woooooo!” the audience shouts.  As I wrote earliier, it was all pretty dumb but at least the dog was cute.

Meanwhile, Hammer (Mark Famiglietti) returns to Indiana from North Carolina!  Mary Beth is so excited!  Hammer explains that he’s not sure he wants to attend Duke.  (I thought Hammer was attending Duke but apparently, he was just in some sort of Duke-affiliated prep school or something.)  Hammer says that Duke might not have a spot for him on the team so he decides to apply to UCLA with Mary Beth and Kristy.

Mary Beth and Kristy get into UCLA!  Yay!

Hammer does not.  Boooo!

Hammer pressures Mary Beth to turn down UCLA and go to the University of Indiana with him.  Hammer, what happened to you!?

Mary Beth agrees but then Hammer learns that Duke does want him to play basketball so he decides he’s going to go Duke anyway and that Mary Beth should come with him.  “You want me to move to North Carolina!?” a shocked Mary Beth says.  (Uhmm, it’s better than freaking Indiana.)  Mary Beth and Hammer break up and Mary Beth decides to go to UCLA afterall.

I guess it’s good that Mary Beth is finally going to graduate from high school but this episode still bothered me.  Bringing back Hammer was cool.  Having him come back with a totally different personality from the one he had when he was previously on the show was not cool.  That just felt like lazy writing.

Let’s move on.

Episode 6.8 “Secrets and Lies”

(Dir by Miguel Higuera, originally aired on November 11th, 2000)

It’s championship time again!

Actually, it was championship time last season.  Seasons 5 and 6 were filmed at the same time and were originally intended to be a part of one big, final season.  NBC decided to not only split the season in two but they also rearranged the order of the episodes, leading to all sorts of continuity confusion.  The tournament that we see the Tornadoes playing at the University of Indiana was originally meant to be a part of the championship story arc that was featured in season 5.  (That storyline, of course, ended with the previously undefeated Tornadoes losing in an upset and learning about humility.)  Instead of airing where it was originally meant to air, this tournament episode somewhat randomly pops up in the middle of season 6.

As for this episode, it’s a mix of the serious and the seriously stupid.  The seriously stupid part of the episode finds Eugene and Silk being led astray by two cheerleaders who steal their uniforms, lock them in a locker room, and try to keep them from playing in the big game.  It doesn’t work, of course.  Silk and Eugene end up tumbling out of an air conditioning duct and landing in the middle of the gym.  The important thing is that they get to play and no one asks why they were wandering around a duct while half-naked in the first place.

As for the serious storyline, it features Mary Beth meeting Brett, a handsome guy who is writing a story for his school’s newspaper.  He takes Mary Beth and the team out to a bar and, in a backroom, attempts to force himself on Mary Beth.  While Mary Beth gets away from him, Brett still threatens to reveal that the team was at a bar if she dares to say anything about what he tried to do.  However, when Mary Beth sees Brett talking to another girl and trying to lead her to a backroom, she realizes that she can’t be quiet.  Brett gets arrested but not before Coach K threatened to rip him from limb to limb.

This was a good episode, solely due to the Mary Beth storyline, which was well-acted and had a valuable message.  When Dick Butkus threatened Brett, you never had any doubt that he meant every word of it.  I’ve been a bit critical of Dick Butkus in these reviews but it’s hard to imagine Reggie Theus bringing the same emotional intensity to this episode that Butkus did.  One gets the feeling that Theus would have just made Mary Beth feel guilty for not speaking up immediately.  Dick Butkus, on the other hand, isn’t going to let anyone get away with hurting his students.